A Mistake Leads The Conversation

Chris Norton 0:00

Today's episode kicks off differently. Instead of easing in with career highlights, our guest, behavioural science expert and author, Phil Barden, opens straight with a T-Mobile campaign disaster that changed the entire course of his career. And instead of hiding that away at the bottom of the show, like some guests do, everybody wants to share a mistake, but usually at the end, Phil brings it right to the beginning. I feel like I'm in a confessional and it's good to, you know, to bring this. No one can aim. Okay, all right, yeah, there's no one listening, just you too. So this week's show is how you can get more out of behavioural science, neuroscience, and use it in your day-to-day for your marketing. Yeah, we're not telling you whether the ad is good or bad, we will just tell you how the brain will process that. Phil is brilliant, and I think I'm gonna have to get him on for a second episode. And he's convinced me to buy his book, The Code. So if you like neuroscience and you want to learn how to use behavioural science to make fair marketing campaigns, this episode is for you. Enjoy. Phil Barden, welcome to the show. Hi, hi Chris. Thanks for having me. No, you're welcome, you're welcome. And we've also got a special guest star. Um Will Ockenden's back on the show after 10 episodes. Welcome, Will. How are you feeling?

Will Ockenden 1:17

Well, it's been one episode, Chris.

Chris Norton 1:19

It's been one episode that I couldn't make. I told the guys I was gonna do that in the office. Anyway, that's a good one. Um Phil, welcome to the show. Um, this is very unusual. Most people that come on the show want us to do the mistake after they've talked about how brilliant they are in their careers. And you you've sort of said, actually, I want to start with my mistake at um T-Mobile. So T-Mobile, um Well, that takes me back, having a T-Mobile phone. Is that the days of Nokia? When did T-Mobile stop being T-Mobile as well? Oh goodness, it was um 2010 or a bit later. Uh they merged with Orange in the UK. Um, so it was joint venture between Deutsche telekom and France Télécom, and then that all got subsumed into EE, which has carried on ever since. Right, that's where they are, EE, because everybody wanted to be on Orange. I remember Orange was quite a cool network. Yeah, that was the days when you had to pay for your um text messages, wasn't it? Indeed.

Phil Barden 2:15

They did Orange Tuesday Orange Tuesdays, wasn't it?

Chris Norton 2:18

Oh yeah, well, very good. Orange Tuesdays. Bring back to and then you get the team. I'm sure there's a T-Mobile Arena somewhere, isn't there? Uh there is in uh in Germany because they're the sponsors of Bayern Munich. Ah, yeah, there you go. That's where I know it from. Probably when they knocked Liverpool out of the cup.

Will Ockenden 2:36

Um we're we're delaying, let's hear

The Flex Tariff Ad That Bombed

Will Ockenden 2:39

the mistake.

Phil Barden 2:39

So the mistake. So I feel as in feel like I'm in a confessional, and it's good to, you know, no one can hear yourself. Okay, all right, yeah. There's no one listening, just you two. No, yeah. So I was I was um VP um for the brand in Europe and charged with with relaunching the brand around Europe, and we'd we'd come up with a a very interesting proposition. You were talking uh just a minute ago about back in the days when you had texts and minutes, and people bought tariffs based on fixed bundles of a number of minutes and a number of texts, and people got mightily fed up if they had, for example, used up all their minutes but had loads of text remaining as almost like credit, but then they got charged a lot of money for making voice calls, and vice versa. So that insight led us to create a flexible tariff called um ironically, flexed. And what flexed did was basically bundle the minutes and text together, and so it didn't matter which you used, you could deplete text and then use your minutes, and or deplete minutes and use text. So it's it was lovely, it was really flexible. And to communicate this, we briefed the agency to come up with uh a creative idea, which they did, which was lovely, which was about things that are rock solid and rigid now flex. So things that you had thought previously were were inflexible are now flexible. And we did uh quite a few different ads, and one of them had uh a guy leaning on a brick wall and gazing over a a park, and the brick wall was flexing under his his weight, under his under his arms, and you know, there was a bit of text about about the proposition, and this this had just really bombed, and we couldn't understand why because we thought this was a lovely creative device, and we've got we've got our guy there who's using the the tariff, and that coincided with uh me being introduced to a couple of guys from a company called Decode, one's a neuroscientist and the other is a psychologist. And I showed them this ad and I said, Look, here's the brief, here's the proposition. Why do you think this ad doesn't work? And they looked at it and it said and said, Well, it's obvious. Really? Why? What's obvious? And they said, Well, what you've got there, I understand what you're trying to do, but what you've got is a guy standing behind a physical barrier, he's gazing over into a park, and what he can see in the middle distance is a bunch of people having a great time, picnicking, playing frisbee, enjoying themselves. And guess what? He's the loner stuck on his own behind the wall. So it was almost like biflexed if you want to have no mates. And and that was the that was the takeout.

What You See Is All There Is

Phil Barden 5:36

You know what? Daniel Kahneman, the um late professor of psychology, had this lovely expression, which is WYSIATI, which stands for, it's an acronym, it stands for what you see is all there is. And it doesn't matter how convoluted the sales pitch from your ad agency is, or the the uh sort of reconciliation you do and the post-rationalization you do in your mind to think, well, people will think XYZ or the takeout will be ABC. No, just prototypically, what does that stand for? What you see is all there is because the brain doesn't give you a second chance, it's going to consume that stimulus in in a second, if that. So you've just got to get across intuitively your desired meaning. So that was the that was the big mistake, but it was also a massive eye-opener and opened my eyes to the world that these two guys inhabited, the world of what they call decision science. And then I gave them more work to do, and the more I worked with them, the more I realized that they'd kind of cracked the nugget of the essence of marketing is about behaviour change, right? All marketing is behaviour change. We want people to buy our brand, buy more, switch, tell people, share stuff, go online, whatever it might be, is about human behaviour. And these guys were coming from fields of study that have been looking at human behaviour for 200 years, and that frankly they knew a lot more than the commercial world did. So that mistake led to me working more with them, getting really excited by this whole idea of decision science. And in the end, I quit my job to join them to set the company up in the UK. So, you know, it was it was a great mistake to make in in retrospect. Uh mistake nonetheless, but one that had a happy ending. Did it what did you do with the actual TV ad then? Did you redo it and because it does feel like a bit like it was a bit of a peeping tom in this video? Oh absolutely. Yeah, so the TV ad, um, also we had to make some changes. So it had someone jumping out of a window onto a pavement, and the pavement flexed almost like a trampoline, like a sort of rubber pavement. But the first cut of that ad had him jumping off a balcony, and people who saw it, myself included, for the first time, are sort of he's committing suicide. Again, what you see is all there is. You know, that is that someone throws himself off a balcony, that's not nice, right? So we cut that. We cut that bit and we had him then going out of a ground floor window, so would land safely, but still we got the little indentation on the uh on the pavement as his feet touch the ground.

Will Ockenden 8:20

Yeah, it sounds like the ad agency could do with a couple of behavioural scientists on their um on their staff for the sounds of it. Those two executions.

Chris Norton 8:27

Yeah, and what it really brought home to me this thing that when you are sitting in a creative presentation, more often than not, the agencies say use phrases such as consumers will think that, blah blah blah, or the takeout will be blah blah blah. You know, how do you know that? That's just you trying to sell a piece of creative. You don't know that's what the prototypical objective, impartial, not really bothered view of Joe Public is going to be. That's why it's it's crucial to take a very neutral stance on this, which is what these guys did in Germany. They say we're agnostic. You know, we're not telling you whether the ad is good or bad. We will just tell you how the brain will process that. What are the meanings? Because the brain's constantly predicting things and trying to recode stimuli into meaning. So, you know, man standing behind a wall on his own, divorced from a group of friends, having a group of people having a good time. What does that prototypically mean? That's the level that you need to approach this at.

Why Behaviour Change Is Marketing

Will Ockenden 9:34

Are we are we getting more sophisticated? I mean, I assume this was a few years ago. Now, you know, it we we you know we've done a few behavioural science um conversations on the show, and and the impression I'm getting is you know, we brands and agencies are becoming more aware of this stuff. You know, it's not just a kind of as you say, intuitively just believing this is what people will think. I mean, what's your experience of that? Are are brands more open to using behavioural science?

Phil Barden 10:00

They they definitely are. When I when I first started this, so that was about 15 years ago now, it was a lonely path to tread, it really was. And you know, my first port of call was to so I set up the business with no clients, but with this conviction that this was a really powerful uh approach. Went back to see all my old mates at Unilever where I'd grown up, they graciously gave me some time. I explained this all, and they sat there, and their reaction was wow, this is so this feels so right, but it's a bit too difficult to process right now, you know, and back to the day job. And I I couldn't understand that, but I guess I I had had the personal experience uh to go that I went through with with T-Mobile um that had galvanized me. And but since then we've had a number of factors. So Daniel Kahneman wrote Thinking Fast and Slow, yeah, it's a multi-million global best seller. Rory Sutherland of the Ogilvy Agency led a charge on behavioural economics when he was um president of the IPA, and he's continued to do so um with annual events like Nudgestock. So he's he's still a great proponent. And then other people have come into the field. So I remember going to meet Richard Shotton when he was still agency side and presenting stuff to him. And Richard, you know, along the way, had a had a road to Damascus moment like me and quit and set up on his own and you know has now written three books. Fantastic. And he's been a guest on the show as well. We've had Richard, we've had, we've had, we've probably had six or seven behavioural scientists. It's a it's a really interesting because everybody's got a slightly different take on it. And when we and Will talk to people like, I mean, we haven't we haven't actually had Rory on yet, but he we he's a target. If he's out there, you can get we hope we hope to get him on soon. But it everybody what gets me is everybody's got a slightly different take. There's all these different types of bias. Um you listen to everybody's like key tips on how to get more out of behavioural science, but actually sometimes they work against each other as

When Bias Advice Collides

Chris Norton 12:10

well, you know. Um, so for instance, I spoke to someone recently called Nancy Harhut. I don't know if you know her, but and she was we were talking about the the bias of where you know social proof, where you walk past a restaurant, it's full, and she gave an example of where she'd walk past one and she went in the one that was full, and it turned out the one that was recommended was filler was fuller later. Um so she'd she'd used social proof the wrong way around. And um, but there's uh like there's a there's so many different like you could go you could go completely AI on it and go, right, AI the head and behavioural science the hell out of my campaign. Here's my campaign. Now do me a million different variations and then you would test it, right? Is that is that the is that the 2026 way to go about marketing now? Is that how we is that what we should all be

AI And The Future Of Consultancy

Phil Barden 12:56

doing? I don't see why not. I mean, to be honest, the stuff that uh that's in the LLMs, I think will replace a lot of consultancies now, because that knowledge is no longer resident in one person who does the desk research and gathers all the studies. You can go and ask Chat or Claude or whoever to summarize it and not only summarize it but give you the give you the recommendations. What are the pluses and minuses? How would you apply it to the following problem? Um, and it does a pretty decent job. Uh so it that will revolutionize a lot of places uh and and workflows that hitherto existed. So I think the real the place where it will still exist is where people have got something that is not replicable. So for example, they've got quant research approaches um that AI simply can't do. So that that still gives uh gives an angle for uh for individual agencies and and consultancies.

Why Write A Behavioural Science Book

Chris Norton 13:59

Brilliant. And and you've you've written a book, right? Do you want to tell us a bit about your book? What because I I think that with books, we've had a few few authors on the show too, and it's such an undertaking. So well done to write a book, but how how did you how did you go about tackling it? And what was the mission that you were trying to achieve by writing a book? Because some people go, Do you know what, Chris? I just wrote it so we could get, you know, if you've written a book, it looks cool, it opens doors, you get on podcasts. Uh or it or was there another reason, or is that just the same reason? It was, I mean, I was setting up my business in the UK from scratch, right? So the business was founded in Germany, and I I set up the UK office. So I needed something to go with to get clients as a door opener, to get on the conference circuit, and having a book reframes you as an individual, that's for sure. So you're no longer Johnny come lately knocking on the door saying, Can I have a conference speaking slot, please? And they say, Yeah, that's 10 grand for sponsorship, and we'll we'll give you a 20-minute slot. Suddenly you're a published author. So that reframing, which is indeed a behavioural science concept, certainly helps. But it wasn't only that, it was my attempt to capture the experience that I'd had learning from these guys on T-Mobile, which culminated in the relaunch of the brand around Europe, which was enormously successful. You may remember this is going back a bit, the T-Mobile Dance ad at London's Liverpool Street Station. It was a f it was the first flash mob. And you know, it's got it's got something like 42 million YouTube views. I mean, it's just astonishing.

Will Ockenden 15:38

It's that would make it so many times since, hasn't it? It has every brand copied it for the years. Exactly.

Phil Barden 15:44

And it this was before um uh before TikTok and Instagram. So we really only had Facebook and YouTube, but it spawned 72 Facebook groups, and um it, I mean, in terms of business impact, it doubled footfall into retail stores within 48 hours. It's astonishing. It won an IPA effectiveness award for the impact on on the brand and on sales and profitability. So that whole experience, I wanted to capture all of the principles behind that. So that was the that was the real purpose of the book, to put all of this scientific stuff, which is often written in impenetrable language. I don't know if you've ever tried reading academic or scientific papers. It's an art form, honestly. So I wanted to put it in layman's speak in terms that I would understand as a marketer, you know, as an ex-brand manager and marketing director. So it was really bridging that gap and making the translation from academia and science into pragmatic application. But that was that was first published in 2013. Um I revised and updated it uh three years ago, so it's in its second edition now. And um one of the lovely testimonials actually was from Richard. Uh he said that decoded is the only behavioural science book that he's read twice. So and he said that's positive by the way. He said it didn't mean I couldn't understand it, it it's a positive. Um Rory Sutherland wrote uh wrote the foreword to it uh as well. And I've had Mark a lovely testimonial from Mark Ritson saying, you know, marketing's about behaviour change, Phil's the expert in this area. This book will help you become a better marketer. So fabulous accolades. Um I'm humbled by those sort of words. Um, but that was the purpose, really. To transmit it's amazing you got Mark to write a sentence without swearing in it. Oh, I had to edit it a lot. He's brilliant, Mark.

Will Ockenden 17:44

I love it. So it'd be good to dive into some of the um some of the kind of the key lessons of the book, particularly the kind of the the value that marketers listening to this

Category Entry Points And Context

Will Ockenden 17:56

can take away. And Chris and I have kind of pulled out a few areas that really kind of grabbed us. Now, the first was around category entry points, um, and um, you know, about the need for brands to um become the first choice in the brain. Do you do you want to start by kind of explaining what a category entry point is in the world of marketing and then and then dive into some of those um biases, I suppose, that that can help influence the brand um in that context?

Phil Barden 18:22

Sure. Well, I think category entry points and the phrase that that sits alongside them, which is mental availability, have both been made hugely popular thanks to the work of um Professor Byron Sharp and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. Byron's book, How Brands Grow, um, How Brands Grow To as well. Um, so basically what the the and this is it's fabulous because it helps our understanding that human decision making is always a product of the person and the situation that they're in. So context is key. And if you think about your own your own behaviour, now I don't know, looking at you guys whether or not you enjoy the occasional alcoholic beverage, but you know, on the basis that you possibly might. Think about your choice of alcoholic beverage when you're on holiday versus when you're at home, when you're in a business meeting, whether it's a business lunch or a casual lunch, whether you're with friends, clients, colleagues, what the weather's like, whether you're indoors, outdoors, whatever it is. All of those are contextual factors, and you only need change one, and it changes your choice, it changes your decision. You are the one constant within that, which is why, incidentally, person-based segmentation is, in my view, utterly useless, because the same person behaves dynamically. We all do, but that's because context changes. So, what category entry points do and help us understand is that contextual bit because it's about you know the the what, when, where, why, who we're with, what where we are, what we're doing at the same time, etc. So it really forces marketers to look at context as an important factor. The other bit linked with it is it's all about given a certain context, which brands are mentally available. So which brand in particular comes to mind first as a choice. And that you know, if you think about um ice cream, for example, you want to buy an ice cream on a sunny day in a park for your kids, certain brands come to mind, versus you want to buy an ice cream to slob out on the sofa with your partner watching a movie, or you want an ice cream as an accompaniment to a dessert that you're serving to guests. Those so those are all different category entry points. The context changes, and with that, your choice changes, the mental availability of brands changes with that context. So category entry point and mental availability are both great steps forward. And when you think about mental availability, it also has um some important roots in neuroscience because and this is a study I cite in decoded that um when people are asked to choose between brands and their favorite brand is present or not present, when their favorite brand is present, there's very little neural activity. The only parts of the brain that are activated are those to do with intuitive decision making, fast, frugal, energy efficient decision making. So called system one. It's like it's almost like a no, literally a no brainer decision. When the favorite brand is not present, so the person is now forced to reflect and think about the brands on choice, there's Lots more neural activity, and that's bad news for the brain because brain activity expends energy, and the brain's sole mission is to help us survive on the planet to pass on our DNA. That's all it is. So it will conserve energy whenever and wherever possible, which is exactly how this whole system one idea came about: that we've got very efficient, um, fast energy um and energy saving, if you like, mental processes that are geared for action, that help us make fast decisions, versus system two, which which takes more reflection and burns more energy. But the point is, mental availability only really works for the first brand to mind, which again is is in is plausible because you don't spend money on the brand that comes to mind second. So you really want to understand which brand comes to mind first. Now that's it's possible to to research that and get a list of those brands. The bit I think actually is missing that I think is very important, is why does brand X come to mind first in those ice cream scenarios? Why it why do different brands why are those different brands mentally available given those different contexts? That's the bit that I think is missing.

Motivation Goals And Superiority

Phil Barden 23:23

Um because that why part of the category enterprise is all about motivation, human motivation. And the why part is answered by understanding superiority, because the brain makes decisions based on the perceived fit with our goals. Now, goals is a concept that is um been studied in cognitive social psychology and cognitive and effective neuroscience, and there's great consensus that human motivation is based on goal achievement, and that's a mixture of functional goals. You know, I want something refreshing, I want fast broadband, I want transportation unequally close. So really, really important things that a brand has to deliver, but that's not all, that's not enough anymore because there are lots of brands that deliver those very well, and this is where there's another level of goals which are more implicit, they are social, emotional, and psychological goals. And superiority comes from the strength of implicit association that we build over time between brand X and goal Y. And it's it's the brain deeming that to be instrumental in helping us achieve our goals. Now, that might this might all sound high-falute and theoretical, but let me make it practical for you. Sorry, let me just give you an example. So this this this idea of superiority and choice ultimately and decision making works throughout our lives. So imagine you wanted to go out and have a have a great Saturday night out with with some mates, some of your mates will become mental availability will become mentally available because you have built associations between the concept of a great night out and friend X, Y, and Z, right? So you would select that group of friends. If, however, your job to be done, let's say, was to you really wanted to um thrash through a personal problem or a financial problem or whatever, and you really just wanted to do it one-to-one or or maybe with a couple of mates, probably different mates would come to mind and be mentally available because you've learned they are going to be great listeners, give you great advice, and they're good sounding boards. They may or may not be the same guys who are gonna help you have a wild night out on Saturday. But this is this mechanism, how the brain makes a choice, is exactly the same when it comes to brands, which is the superior choice, i.e., which has the best fit with that particular job to be done, whether it's giving my kids something in the park on a hot day or serving ice cream with a dessert to guess, or slobbing out on the sofa to watch a movie. The brain has learned over time, and this this learning comes through everything we're exposed to over years, through obviously through advertising, word of mouth, our own person experience, everything we see and hear around us, which is what the academics call the statistics of the environment. If everything we take in, who's using it, when, on which occasion, etc.

How Brands Build Mental Availability

Chris Norton 26:38

etc. Because like if if we've got um if so we're we we do PR, right? We're we will we run Will and I run Prohibition, uh, and we're a PR agency in Leeds. And obviously, when some I mean, if you're a if you're a Yorkshire brand, we're probably the uh the first brand, we're one of the biggest in Yorkshire, you know, you keep depending on what you look at, we're probably yeah, the number one or number two depends on what you're looking for. Um but what if if you're looking in the UK, we're you know we're in a top 150 agency, which is great, and people have heard of us and people listen to this podcast. But how do we how would I just using this as an example? How would we as an example, how would we make people who work in marketing think, oh, we should get some PR and we should work with them? How do how do you do that? Is that the most challenging bit of it? Is I mean honestly, it's the same, it's the same thing brands have been doing forever. It's about it's about exposure, it's about advertising, it's all of your touch points, um, it's you know, it's sponsorship, it's promotions, it's everything, because the brain will learn from everything it perceives. So if they see your name in conjunction with a certain activity, a certain event, a certain client, that starts to create a link. And the more frequently we see that, and the greater the consistency with which we see it, the more sticky it will become. Because they the saying in uh in psychology is what uh what fires together, wires together in the brain. So it's the same, it's the same way humans learn anything, whether we learn to drive, count, speak a foreign language, uh learn a musical instrument, it's about frequency and consistency of exposure. So there's no magic bullet. Um it's just it's a slog, but it's what you know, it's what how brands have been promoting advertising for years in the B2B space as well as B2C. Should we just get Stephen Fry to be our face of prohibition then and the third voice on the podcast? Is that what we're saying? So everybody associates and the two the two things fire and wire together. You you could if you if um well, I mean, you know, there's a affordability is one issue. Slightly out of our budget. But the other important consideration is what associations do you want to borrow from someone like Stephen Fry? Because he already has a set rich set of associations, right? And this is where you're looking for the the fit and the congruence between your brand and whatever it is, a celebrity, an event, or whatever.

Distinctive Assets And Memory Retrieval

Will Ockenden 29:15

So, Phil, I'm gonna show that I've done a little bit of uh homework here. I believe you've recently done quite an interesting um social media post about Cillit Bang, and you talk about how it's easier to um hold on, let me get this right. Um, it's easier to retrieve a memory than build a new one. And for that reason, it's great that Barry Scott's been brought back for the uh Cillit Bang ad. So that presumably ties in with a lot of what you've just been saying now. Do you want to talk us, talk to us about that? Because we all love that ad as well.

Phil Barden 29:46

It is, it's all about learning, right? And once once once we've learned something, we are able to retrieve it given given a certain stimulus. So we can all you know complete. Um I went to see Pete Peter Kayay a couple of years ago at the O2, and the first 20 minutes of his act was him starting off an advertising slogan or jingle, but only giving the first exactly and getting the audience to complete it. And everybody loved it, and more importantly, everybody knew it, right? They knew them because then we grew up with them. So all of that stuff is exactly the same. And we did we did the study for Weetabix, uh looking at distinctive brand assets. Most of it was about packaging because they wanted to relaunch their pack, but we also included communication assets, and what they found, and to their great surprise, was that the line have you had your, which they ditched several ten years previously, was at the time of the study the single most distinctive advertising line in the cereal category in the UK. So, no, absolutely. So for the agency BBH, this was as the planners Tom Roach, who said to me, This is like finding a Rembrandt in the attic. And he he, in fact, he used that as the title of his IPA award-winning paper uh on the case study. So they brought back, have you had your Weetabix with the um Jack and the Beanstalk campaign? Um they got three times the ROI on that advertising compared to their previous campaign. So it's incredibly powerful to do that, and that's that was exactly why I wrote that post about Silip Bang. You know, he's been off air, I think it's seven years, but everyone will remember that bang and the dirt is gone. And it's and it's really efficient. You can reawaken the neurons. That's the point. You're not having to learn something afresh every time, you're just working with what it is. It's a bit like you know, when we you learn a language, you learn to play a musical instrument, you could drop it for a few years and go back to it. You might be a little bit rusty, but you'll pick it up again much quicker than if you'd started to learn something new. By muscle memory. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, yeah. It's the same, exactly the same idea. I'll have to ask, I'll have to ask Tom about that because I spoke to Tom yesterday um and Tom's coming on the show. Oh, brilliant. So actually, he's yeah, he's coming on the show. If you what what's one question I should ask Tom then, do

The Hidden Cost Of Changing Stuff

Phil Barden 32:22

you think? Oh um, you could well, you could ask him about which be ask him whether it was difficult to sell the idea to the client of resurrecting that because you see, one of the one of the issues, particularly with um distinctive assets, is that when client personnel change, the new incoming brand manager, marketing director, whoever wants to make his or her mark. I know I did when I was a brand manager. You know, you you you want to put your stamp on something, you want to make a name for yourself. And one of the easiest knee-jerk ways to do that is to change stuff. Let's have a let's have a restaging, let's have a ref let's refresh the packaging. We need a new ad campaign. And what I've learned since is that that's probably providing your strategy is working, change is the worst thing you could possibly do. And it's a very brave marker who says, no, you know what, it ain't broke. Let's let's not change anything. We just stick at it. You can doesn't mean you have to do everything the same, slavishly, 100% copy all the time. You can refresh at the at the what we call the signal level, so the creative, as long as you keep consistent at the meaning level, it's exactly what um, for example, links, links have done for years. You know, they they bring out a new fragrance, they have a new ad, but underneath it, the whole campaign and the whole brand proposition stays rock solidly the same. Yeah.

Will Ockenden 33:51

So in effect, I mean this is a nice problem to have, but if if you're a brand that's got an amazingly recognizable, long-standing slogan or logo, you're stuck with it, really, aren't you? The smart decision is to stick with it. Um, even if you're sick of it personally, actually it's still delivering for you, and it'd be foolish to change.

Phil Barden 34:09

Absolutely. I mean, but one of the you know, the poster chart example of this is Kit Kat, have a break. Because that has been going for I don't know how many decades, but it's refreshed creatively, uh, you know, and everyone loves clever, some of the clever things that they do, but the core proposition and the line remain unchanged. I remember when I was a brand manager at Unilever um moving on to a brand and being invited out for lunch by the agent ad agency planning director. Now I at the time I thought, oh, nice agency lunch, you know, write the afternoon off. And um I sat down with this lady, she was quite uh well, very well revered in in London creative circles, and rightly so. We dispensed with the pleasantries, and her opening gambit was basically, Phil, I've worked on this brand for a lot longer than you ever will, and I'll still be working on the brand long after you move on. So my plea to you is don't get up. And I was quite taken aback because I thought this is a bit rude to say to a client, and I and I didn't fully understand what she meant, but now I do, and it's this whole point about consistency. Now, thank God that brand had her as a custodian, and you often find that with agencies long tenures, they know more about the brand, and intuitively and implicitly they get it more than some of the clients who riff you know move around every couple of years. So having that that touchstone who could say, no, we're not gonna we're not gonna change this, we're not gonna re-clean it or whatever. That's really valuable. It's amazing when a creative agent, like creative agencies stay with a brand. I do think that that that does last longer. Will and I interviewed somebody um from who used to work for Yorkshire T, who's the head of head of marketing, marketing director um at Yorkshire T. And they they were with um Lucky is it Lucky Generals? I think it is. Is that right, Will? Was it Lucky Generals or is it uncommon? I've read that many marketing texts now, I forget what uh where I'm at. I think it was Lucky Generals uh for 18 years. Sorry if I got that wrong, but anyway, they were with them for 18 years, and they're still with them. And I just think yeah, it's that being brave enough to stay with somebody who can keep like like the you when you were talking about the Lynx example, I was thinking Spec Savers, because then like you should have gone to Spec Savers, same strap line, different execution every time. That's what works, isn't it? Rather than doing the same bloody advert, although I do, although I would go back to you mentioned Peter Kay, and we were talking the other day. Yeah, some of the adverts from back in the day, not to be too nostalgic. Do you remember the John Smith's adverts? I reckon if John Smith had to do a new campaign, she could just bring them back. Do you know what I mean? They were hilarious. Was it Arkright the character? I can't remember, maybe someone like it's cold. There was that one where his his mum was doing the hoovering, and she's he said, Come on, uh I've said I've spoken to the care home, they're gonna take you. She's like, I'm 55. It's like it's okay. I've just pretty clean brilliant.

Novelty Plus Familiarity In Creative

Phil Barden 37:20

But this seems from a from a neuroscience point of view, there are advantages to this um refresh, refreshing creative because what the brain is always trying to predict something, right? Going back to its mission to keep us alive. Now, if what it sees each and every time is the same, it recognises that and then stops processing because it's like I know that, I don't need to pay further attention, I don't need to expend any more cognitive effort on that. So, you what you need is this um blend of novelty and familiarity, because which is what Spec Savers do brilliantly, what Kit Kat does brilliantly. So you kind of you know the brand, but then the execution is new and you pay attention to that, you get a little payoff because you know, particularly in the Specsavers one, they're always quite amusing. So it's like, oh yeah, I know that, and and it's gonna make me laugh, and it then reinforces the Spec Saver's message, and then that passes into common parlance and culture, doesn't it? People make it comes into everyday language when people make can we say, like, oh, we should have got the Spec Sabres. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

Will Ockenden 38:33

I suppose I suppose for a brand the challenge is knowing when you've hit gold and not just sticking with something that isn't isn't very good for a long period of time. I think that's the that's the test, isn't it? Because it there'd be nothing worse than sticking with a strap line that doesn't particularly work for 15 years in the belief that it's gonna eventually gain some traction.

Chris Norton 38:52

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that you probably find out in your uh in your bottom line whether it's working or not. So if we if you had some advice then, so what are the three things that you think marketers in 2026 should be doing to get ahead?

Three Practical Tips For 2026

Phil Barden 39:09

So if they if they're sat there thinking, right, I've got a campaign, I've got my campaign ready, I know what I'm doing. What are your three tips to make sure that it's gonna be like better? I don't know. Have I picked three because that's behavioural science? I don't know, Phil. The power of three, everyone always says three things because it's easier, easy for people to remember, I think. Um so my my first and most important one thing at least, and this is what I wish I'd known when I was a brand manager, is this understanding that human motivation is founded on on goal achievement. So it's understanding, working out what goals is my brand instrumental in helping people achieve, because that's what I need to signal through all of my activities, across all of my touch points and all of my communications. You know, brand brand X helps me deliver whatever the functional goals are, but also the social, emotional, psychological goals. And if people want to learn more about that, there's a whole chapter in my book devoted to goals. It's so, so fundamental and so important. So that would that would be the first um plea, if you like, and and as I said, it I wished I'd known that when I was a young brand manager. Um secondly, I think is and this is a bit more difficult to grasp, but it's worth definitely worth thinking about that perception beats cognition every time. So it's going back to this idea of um the story of flexed and the you know the brick wall, that we know rationally that that's a clever idea, that the brick wall is is flexing because this guy is using a flexible tariff. But perception overrides it totally, and first impressions count and first impressions last. And there are so many behavioural science experiments that prove this. I mean, giving people um, for example, two desserts. One is one is a brown dessert, the other is a uh creamy coloured dessert, and they taste them, and you ask them what they are. They say the cream-colored dessert is vanilla, and the brown-colored dessert is chocolate. And the trick is they're identical, right? They are both vanilla desserts, but one's been coloured brown with food colouring. But because we consume with our eyes, the eyes tell the brain to expect chocolate, and subjectively we experience chocolate, right? And perception beats cognition, even though you could tell people until they're blue in the face. That is not chocolate, that's vanilla. No, it's it's chocolate, right? Taste of chocolate. So that that whole um area is is super important. Um and I think the third is is understanding codes, understanding that the brain is brilliant at decoding X as meaning Y. So this is this is really the province of agency creatives, but using text and images that support your message. And a simple and obvious example is something like flowers. You know, if you if um a lady in in your office has a birthday, would you give her a bunch of sunflowers or a bunch of red roses? Right? It would be probably wholly inappropriate to give this lady a bunch of red roses because we have learned that red roses decode as having a certain meaning of love and romance, etc. etc. Whereas sunflowers decode as having a meaning of nature, the sun, warmth, uplifting, positivity, optimism, things like that. So understanding that X equals Y in the brain is also really super important because you can unwittingly use codes that have a completely wrong meaning. So it's understanding that as well. So those would be my three things.

How To Reach Phil And Buy

Will Ockenden 43:06

Well, I think people are going to be listening to this thinking they absolutely want to speak to you and also read your book. So do you want to let people know how they can get hold of you and where they can find the book as well? Because yeah, I'm sure people will want to be ordering that.

Phil Barden 43:18

Yeah, thank you. Well, the easiest for the book is Amazon. So you can either search my name, Phil Barden, or decoded the science behind why we buy. Make sure you get the green cover, not the orange cover. The green cover is the updated and revised edition. Um, which by the way, Richard's shot and said will make a wonderful excuse to now read it three times. So there you go. Um if people want to get hold of me, uh only three, yeah. Uh get hold of me uh personally, either LinkedIn, I'm on there, um, can connect with me, message me, or if they want to email me directly, you'll be very happy. My email address is phil@decodemarketing.com. That's decodemarketing all one word or lowercase.com. So there you go, LinkedIn, email, or the book. End or the book.

Who To Invite Next

Chris Norton 44:10

And Phil, our final question that we ask every guest is, and every guest goes, oh, that's a really hard question. If you were us, who is the next person you'd invite on this show and why? Oh, okay. So you've already mentioned Rory. Um he would be he would be my first choice because of the link to variable size. But someone else whose acumen, insights, intelligence, and just general all round amazing bloke, uh, who I absolutely adore, is a guy called Mark Earls. So Mark wrote a book called Herd, which is all about the nature of our of us being social a social species. Um, he's written um follow-up books like I'll have what she's having, and another one called Copy Copy Copy, which is uh, as the name suggests, is about herd behaviour and humans copying behaviour. He he would be a fabulous guest. He's an ex um agency planning director, um, super smart, super lovely. Um, we'll be a hope you'd have a great conversation with him. So Mark Earls.